


Heart Into Stone

by FreshBrains



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Derek, Apocalypse, Hunters Vs. Pack, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Minor Character Death, Oral Sex, Werewolf Politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-01
Updated: 2013-12-01
Packaged: 2018-01-01 15:06:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1045341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreshBrains/pseuds/FreshBrains
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“We are magnificent beings, my darlings.  We are strong, and powerful, and intelligent,” Talia once said,  her voice rising slightly like she was swallowing a sob.  “But we are not human.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heart Into Stone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [argle_fraster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/argle_fraster/gifts).



> Glad to be a pinch hitter for this fest...I enjoyed writing this fic, and I hope the prompter enjoys. <3
> 
> Spoilers at the bottom notes for character death.

It started with an alpha and a hunter, as all great werewolf stories do. An alpha and a hunter in the wrong place at the wrong time, and it destroyed _everything_.

“We keep ourselves hidden,” Talia once told Derek and his sisters, lining them up like schoolchildren for the most important lesson of their lives. “We keep ourselves hidden because they cannot understand us.”

“Who are ‘they’?” Cora asked, still the gap-toothed baby of the family.

“The humans,” Laura said, masking an eye-roll, ever the surly teenager.

(They were just a normal family, the perfect all-American family).

“But Dr. Deaton is a human,” Derek said, eyebrows furrowed, caught somewhere between Cora’s innocence and Laura’s cynicism. “Since he knows, do other humans know?”

“Alan is an emissary,” Talia stressed. “He’s a friend to our kind. His ancestors were allied with our ancestors.” But he was still human—it was complicated, sticky, too tangled for the little wolves to understand.

Laura, Derek, and Cora grew up in their world with the knowledge that that could be themselves only at home. Claws and fur were for the woods around the house, howling was only on the full moon. The rest of the time it was for lunch boxes and track meets, part-time jobs and PTA groups, chats over coffee and neighborhood block parties—human time. But Derek never forgot Talia’s last piece of advice after that lesson.

“We are magnificent beings, my darlings. We are strong, and powerful, and intelligent.” Her voice rose slightly, like she was swallowing a sob. “But we are _not_ human.”

*

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Derek says, holding the man by his shirt collar. “But it looks like you’ve wandered into the wrong territory.”

The hunter is old. His hair is thinning and he wears a thick flannel shirt, stained with dark splotches of long-dried blood. He should know better.

“I’m not lookin’ for trouble,” the man says, voice strangled. His face is red and the veins in his neck bulge from Derek’s tightening grip. “My kid lives here, I’m coming to take him out of here, bring him to our territory on the coast.” His eyes are wet. “You wouldn’t let my boy die in here, would ya?”

“What’s his name?” Derek doesn’t release his grip. He lets his eyes burn blue; figures the hunter must be used to it.

“Uh…” the man pauses for half a second, throat bobbing as he panics.

Derek raises his arm in the air and brings his claws down with a frustrated growl, swiping clean across the man’s throat. He doesn’t make a sound as he goes down—he’s dead before his body hits the brown grass, eyes wide and glassy.

Derek flexes his claws and bends down, cleaning them on the man’s shirt. “Check the perimeters,” he calls, and Scott and Cora bound down the rickety porch stairs. 

Derek checks the man’s bulging canvas backpack—it’s full of silver arrowheads, bullets soaking in wolfsbane gel packs, and enough lighter fluid to burn up the county. “He was heavily armed, so I’m guessing his backup is weak.” He glances at Scott—the boy hasn’t shifted, unlike Cora, who is chomping at the bit. “Kill any hunter you see. No exceptions.”

Cora nods and dashes to the back of the house, growling. Scott swallows heavily before nodding and taking the side of the house facing the west woods. Derek tries not to give the order too often, knows how much Scott hates it, but he’s the alpha, which means he calls the shots. 

Derek drags the hunter to the east side of the house and tosses him into the grass before grabbing the shovel. He swipes his forehead with his wrist and feels his pulse fly; it seems like he’s constantly half-shifted ever since the war began. 

The door opens and Isaac’s soft footsteps patter to the side of the house. “Cora told me to wait this one out.”

Derek starts to dig, jams the shovel into the bone-dry earth, and his hackles rise at the scent of his mate. “Probably for the best. How’re you feeling?”

Isaac shrugs. “Been better. The crutch helps.” He wiggles his bad leg, mangled with a hatchet soaked in wolfsbane, and Derek can see blood still seeping through the bandages. Isaac looks at Derek, eyes piercing. “Deaton is coming by tomorrow to take it off.”

“Can’t Cora do it?” They’re running out of bandages, but they make do.

“The leg. Not the wrap.” Isaac looks up at the sky. His voice is flat. “It’s going to rain soon. We need it.”

Derek digs and digs, not daring to look up, because he hasn’t cried since Boyd died earlier that season and he swears he’ll never cry again. “It’s hot. What’s the date today?”

Isaac shrugs again, leans against the side of the house. “No idea. None of us keep track anymore.” He picks at his nails, a prissy habit he never broke, something all human. “Late August, maybe?”

The hunter’s body already smells—too few showers when they’re on the run, no washing machines—and Derek chucks down the shovel. “Come here.”

Isaac hobbles towards him, letting the crutch fall next to the shovel, and Derek wraps his arms around the kid’s skinny shoulders, breathing in his river-water scent. 

“Who needs two legs during a war?” Isaac jokes, huffing a warm breath into Derek’s neck, fingers scrabbling on Derek’s shirt. They’re both petrified, Derek can smell it.

“I never should’ve sent you out there.” Derek steadies Isaac, presses a kiss to his shoulder. He tries to push the guilt down and away; he almost succeeds. He’s good at making himself into steel.

“I killed that hunter. She was after you. And now we’re both here, and we’re both alive.” Isaac leans back and presses his forehead to Derek’s. He trusts Derek to hold him up, trusts him with his life. “We’re alive. Cora’s alive, Scott’s alive, Stiles and Danny and Mrs. McCall and Deaton and the twins, they’re all alive.”

_Boyd and Erica are dead. Peter is dead. Allison is dead. Lydia is missing. Marin is missing. Jennifer and Kali are dead. We’re alive, but we’re not fine._ Derek doesn’t say it out loud.

Isaac finally pulls away and shuffles back, swinging down to grab his crutch in a fluid motion. “Finish up before it gets dark. I’ll make something to eat.”

Derek clutches his hand for a moment, leaving his scent all over Isaac, reminding himself that Isaac is still there. 

*

“I’d rather die,” Isaac says quietly, curled up in Derek’s arms later that night. They buried the hunter and Scott and Melissa retreated to their room, the twins to theirs, Cora to the basement, Danny and Stiles to the loft. Nighttime was alone time, time to huddle with the people you needed to survive.

“What do you mean?” Derek asks, hand warm against the nape of Isaac’s neck. It’s cold in the house, even though the days are unseasonably hot. Derek figures autumn is closer than any of them expected.

“I’d rather die than not be able to escape.” Isaac doesn’t look at Derek, keeps his eyes trained on Derek’s chest. Derek gave himself a new tattoo after the war—a red wolf. A target for any hunter who saw it. 

Isaac is different, too. He got skinnier, grew his hair longer, and started wearing clothes that were too tight. He got Derek’s tattoos on his arms and back as a sign of devotion; Scott had them too (and so did Erica and Boyd). He’s smaller but _larger_ at the same time; his presence is alarming, this sharp young man with his knife-edge elbows and collarbones, uninjured foot weighed down with a scuffed black combat boot. 

(“He’s a war baby,” Kali said before Gerard Argent tied her up and tortured her until she died in agony. “He hasn’t known anything else.”)

“I’d never leave you here,” Derek said fiercely, taking Isaac’s chin between his thumb and index finger. “Stop acting like you have a choice in this. You’re a werewolf. You lose a leg, you cope. That’s the way it is.”

“You want to see me hobble into gunfire? Get strung up by a few hunters who think the crippled wolf is a joke? I’m the one who has to deal with this, not you.” Isaac whips back the sheet and a shiver runs down Derek’s body—not only because of the cold. Isaac’s leg is no better or worse, still swollen and red, wrapped in layers of gauze. 

“I’ll protect you,” Derek says, pleading with Isaac. “Do you really want to die like this? Die because you’re too afraid of what else might happen?”

This hits Isaac like a slap, and he pushes up out of the bed on his forearms, grabbing for his crutch. “I’m not your fucking soldier, Derek. I’m your beta. I’m your mate.” He pulls a thin tee shirt down over his skinny ribs. “I wish you could see me like that.”

*

Derek is glad Talia isn’t alive to see what happened to her world, her carefully constructed black and white world with werewolves on one side, hunters on the other, and humans balancing precariously in the middle.

After the hunters set off the first bombs on the East Coast and wiped out seven packs, and a hot-headed pack with three alphas and a dozen betas slaughtered a group of fifty hunters live on the national news (one was a congresswoman, one a TV actress, Derek didn’t _know_ these things, he didn’t know how lines could be crossed) the country turned into a gaping wound.

This was Derek’s world. He was used to the blood, the fear, the violence.

But it was different when everyone else fell in.

*

Isaac was with Derek from the first day, from the first attack. 

“What are we supposed to do? You’re an alpha, aren’t you supposed to fight?” Isaac was still a child then, a surly teenage boy who wanted to date and screw and play video games with Scott. 

“I’m supposed to protect,” Derek said, eyes trained on the TV news bulletin, watching fire blaze the streets of Baltimore, Brooklyn, Philadelphia. They showed a map—it was creeping across the country, slowly but surely. It could only end in one place. “My job is to protect my pack.”

Isaac placed a hand on Derek’s shoulder, squeezing the warm muscle. “We trust you. I trust you.”

Derek was an alpha to a pack that broke apart in bits and pieces during the first year of the war, and what was left was a bunch of shards, fragments of people who used to spend their days smiling and laughing.

Scott and Allison were mate-bonded in peace time, when they believed they could be together forever. But Allison left after the first of the California riots—her father pulled her out of town as she cried and yelled goodbye to Scott, her phone left crushed in the dirt. 

Allison and Chris didn’t join the hunting revolution, but Allison was the one who explicitly chose to go against them. She fought with the wolves; she wore a red and grey badge on her chest for them. She was a traitor to her kind. Two months after she disappeared, Scott howled out in agony, clutching his chest like his heart ripped in two, and Derek knew Allison was dead. He hoped she died like most of the wolves and hunters—in battle, quickly, bravely, for a cause. 

But Derek just _knew_ she was executed by her own, and her grandfather was the one who held the sword. 

Lydia disappeared around the same time, but Derek had a feeling she was better off than any of them. Lydia Martin was a powerful woman with a dangerous gift; hunters and pack alphas alike coveted her. She could sense death—what better war weapon than a banshee?

Stiles and Aiden left for months to try and find her. When they came back, Aiden was missing an eye, Stiles was missing two fingers, and they never spoke of what happened.

(It was the best method of punishment the hunters doled out to werewolves— _take away something that couldn’t grow back_. They also beat Stiles so bad he lost the hearing in his left ear, and from the way he limped for weeks, Derek figured they’d raped both boys).

There was so much destruction around them, packs dying every single day, hunters stacked up like firewood in forests and on prairies and at the bottom of lakes. But Isaac was constant—he was Derek’s beta, his second in command, and Derek soon realized he was starting to rely on him. 

An alpha who could barely take care of his betas, relying on a beta who cowered from gunshots and couldn’t sleep at night without a candle lit by the bedside.

What a sad pair they made.

*

“I can’t do this, I _can’t_ …Derek, they’re coming, oh my god…” Isaac was panicking; there was no way around it. His instincts as a human were flight before fight and that didn’t change as a wolf, no matter how tough he wanted to be—there were hunters above ground and Isaac and Derek were stuck in a dirt cave no larger than a twin bed, curled around each other and trying not to scream.

Derek was panicking in a different way; he smothered the urge to clap his hand over Isaac’s mouth, dig his claws into Isaac’s neck, like Isaac was drowning and trying to pull Derek under. Cora, Scott, and Melissa were underneath the Hale House floorboards, hiding like convicts, so far away from Derek, and the rest took refuge in the woods.

“I know, but you need to be _quiet_ ,” Derek rumbled, face buried in Isaac’s hair.

High-heeled boots clattered against the porch and the unmistakable pump of a shotgun sent Derek’s eyes blazing.

Warmth and a strong smell filled the cellar, and Derek realized he’d pissed himself—him, not Isaac.

“Come out to play, little wolves,” a woman sing-songed, opening the front door. Derek’s breath stopped at the sound of the squeaky doorknob. She was invading his home, his childhood home—it had already been burned by hunters once, it was already a half-charred coffin where his aunts and uncles and parents all died. His blood sang with the urge to fight.

“No,” Isaac said softly, wrapping his shaking hands around the leather lapels of Derek’s jacket. “You can’t, they’ll k-kill us all.” He’s right—he may be panicking, but he’s right. If they even trace a werewolf back to the house, they’ll burn it up, and Derek will have to see his family die a second time.

“I can protect the pack,” Derek hissed, claws clicking out without him even trying. He could only see stripes of light through the boards above the cellar, they flashed down on Isaac’s own glowing yellow eyes.

“You’re protecting us right now,” Isaac said, voice urgent and desperate. “Look at you, you sensed them from miles away when none of us could, you hid us. You’re an amazing alpha, Derek. But you can’t win this fight without getting us all into trouble.” His heartbeat raced, he squeezed his eyes shut.

(Derek thinks about how Isaac’s dad used to lock him up and how exhausting it would be to go through that panic every single day, that fear, the not knowing. No matter how many times Isaac’s bastard father locked him up, it was still a nightmare, _every single time_. Isaac fought a war in his own home and won.)

“They’re leaving,” Isaac murmured, eyes glancing upwards. 

Boots trample down the stairs, jumping and gleeful, and the same woman shouted, “That fucking sucked, someone must’ve already got to ‘em.”

Derek and Isaac hold their breath, clutching onto each other, and don’t exhale until nothing but the sound of the birds chirping surrounds them.

“You did it,” Derek breathed, pressing his forehead to Isaac’s. They could leave, the danger was gone (for that hour, minute, second). But something changed between them in the cellar. There was a charge between them, a tether. Derek didn’t want to let go of Isaac.

That was the day they became each other’s anchors.

*

Derek starts fucking Isaac because there’s nowhere else to put that energy, anger, and bloodlust that won’t get his pack killed.

“On your knees,” Derek said one night for the hundredth time, voice low and gravelly, a growl forming in his throat as Isaac drops instantly to the floor. Isaac’s hands and knees were dirty from the grimy floorboards (they can never seem to keep it clean with everyone in and out all the time) and his cock hung hard and red between his legs. He looked up at Derek through his lashes and there was still a hint of a smirk on his face; he wants anything Derek will give him, he’s _gagging_ for it.

“Can I?” He asked sweetly, as if Derek wasn’t going to say anything else, give him any more instructions.

Derek wound a hand through Isaac’s curls, scratching the boy’s scalp. “Open your mouth.”

Isaac does, instantly and obediently, but he’s still smiling, just a little bit. Derek kept one hand in his hair and shoved three fingers in Isaac’s mouth, shuddering at the heat. Isaac moaned around them—there are some nights he just wanted to be filled, just wanted a cock in him. He craved it just as much as Derek craved an outlet for everything that boiled up in him all day.

“Suck,” Derek said, one word, one brutish word and a yank to Isaac’s hair, and Isaac’s warm, wet mouth covered his cock, taking him in one swallow, unafraid and devoted to the task.

He’s good at it, better than Derek expected—he realized how distant he’d been as an alpha before the war, how he thought Isaac never had girlfriends and boyfriends before him, but he can tell Isaac had another dick in his mouth before his. It makes him angrier, jealous, irrational…he wants Isaac to himself. Isaac’s attention the only thing he can afford to be selfish about.

Isaac whined, looking up at Derek, and Derek knows he needs to speak, he needs to tell Isaac how good he is, how sweet, how amazing he looks stuffed full of cock.

(These things are so trivial now; people are dying and the world is in flames and Derek still has a hard time telling a beautiful boy how good he sucks cock.)

“You’re perfect,” Derek gasped as Isaac pulled back and laved his tongue down Derek’s length, getting it wetter, spit running down his chin. “You’re perfect, Isaac.”

Isaac looked up again, clear eyes blue and watery, cheeks red. “I want to make you forget.”

Derek can’t forget. There’s too much that needs to be remembered. But he can try, for Isaac.

*

The twins die on the day Isaac’s leg starts to heal. 

Scott comes back from the lake, dripping wet with a grim look, dragging the amorphous body of the twins in their alpha form. It’s missing the head.

“The hunters are gone,” Scott says, voice shaking, and his clothes are streaked in blood, his shirt torn. Nobody asks questions.

Danny doesn’t cry, just holds Stiles hand (they had a strange friendship bordering on romance; it was hard to be human in a renegade werewolf pack without having camaraderie) and looks away when Derek digs a grave.

Isaac sits on the front porch, bad leg out in front of him, and twists a shoelace around two sticks to make a cross. “Were they even religious?” He asks, not looking up.

“Aiden was,” Danny says. “Ethan was an atheist.”

“No atheists in the trenches,” Melissa says, taking the cross from Isaac and sticking it into the dry earth. She wraps an arm around Danny’s shoulders and he melts into her embrace; they all can’t help but see their own mothers in Mrs. McCall.

They say a short prayer and disperse, checking perimeters again. Derek sits down next to Isaac. “You’ll keep your leg.”

Isaac nods. “I know. I can feel it. The skin is healing.”

They’re quiet for a few seconds, and Derek takes Isaac’s hand.

“I’d still rather die sometimes,” Isaac says, and Derek finally understands him.

*

Things don’t get better for a long, long time, but the pack stays together.

Derek didn’t expect that.

Winter comes and they run out of food for a while. Derek, Isaac, and Cora go out and hunt for deer but the hunters practically wiped out the population, trying to starve the wolves. Stiles gets sick, cries in bed, calls out for his father, but he fights through it and lives.

Sheriff Stilinski is one of the good surprises. He shows up one day, still in his uniform, with a group of ex-military and law enforcement officers on a covered truck. 

“Stiles…is he?” The sheriff is thin but muscular, looking no better or worse than Derek’s pack as he climbs off the truck gun in hand, but his voice is struggling for power.

Derek opens his mouth to tell the sheriff that his son is alive in the house, but he smells the overpowering scent of relief and knows Stiles is already there.

“You have a beard,” Stiles says, mouth open as he stands stock-still on the doorway, barefoot and still soft with sleep as he stared at his father. 

It was one of the good days. 

Lydia comes back, too, with Marin Morrell. They’re both skinny with short, choppy haircuts and handmade clothes, but they made it through the winter together.

“She saved me,” Lydia says one night as she looks into the fire, no trace of the haughty high school genius left in her gaunt face. “She was like a warrior queen. She killed them all.”

Their stories always ended in death, always.

Then maybe a little happiness once in a while, in the way Isaac can still smile like he’s a prince whenever he beats Scott at a game of checkers or kills the biggest deer, or the way people can come back when you think they’re gone forever. There’s still happiness is stolen kisses, weeks without hunters, old jokes and stories, families coming together.

These are their stories now. Capture, death, escape. More death. 

But they live for the little moments of happiness.

**Author's Note:**

> Character Deaths: Includes death of major character (Allison) and minor characters (Peter, Erica, Boyd, Jennifer, Kali, Aiden, Ethan) off-screen.


End file.
